Day Twenty-Six: Penultimate Trip Post

This will be my second to last post on the trip.  Today is a day for rest and getting ready for the trip home.  While there are fewer book stores than I remember in 2001 when I was in Dublin for the first time there still are some great bookstores.  And I have been in two CD shops that include quite a bit of traditional music, so I will have some good fodder for the usual music subject once the dust has settled and I am moved into St. Gregory's in Oshawa.

After meeting a priest I know from the Diocese of London, Ontario, in the morning we wandered over to view the Book of Kells at Trinity College and then a short meander around St. Stephen's Green.  The Book of Kells is a ceremonial Book of the Gospels transcribed and decorated in the 9th century.  It survived the destruction of the monasteries by Cromwell in the 1640's and has been at the college more or less ever since.  The Great Room of the library is also something to see including other rare books that are on display.  Not a rare book but a rare poster was also there for viewing:  a proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Ireland on Easter Sunday 1916.

The Great Room as well as the building itself are classical in conception and inside busts are presented down the length of the library portraying the great thinkers of ancient Greece and then the contemporary thinkers of the Enlightenment who were associated with the university.  This classical interest was partly related to some separation of academic discipline at least from sectarianism if not religion as such.  The room, then, reflects the bubbling tensions of its day and the attempts to deal with them.  When our own times seem too complicated it can be good to remember that struggling with tension to find a fruitful relationship between faith, religion and society is not new.

Lunch was had at Bewley's Cafe. And then I went on to final shopping and now I'm back at the hotel starting to get ready for the travelling that comes tomorrow.

Entering Trinity College